KD NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, May 22: With complaints of judgments not being uploaded on time, the Supreme Court on Thursday asked all the high courts to furnish details of cases since last year where judgments have been pronounced and the date on which verdicts were put online.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh, which is seized of the matters where judgments have not been pronounced for several years despite orders being reserved, directed that the data be furnished by all the high courts before July 21.
“In continuation of our order dated May 13, 2025, the Registrar Generals of all the high courts are further directed to submit an additional report giving the full description of the dates of pronouncement of judgments after January 1, 2024 and the dates when such judgments were uploaded. This information up to May 31, 2025 shall be furnished before the date fixed i.e., July 21, 2025,” the bench directed.
On May 13, the top court said high court judges were taking unnecessary breaks and called for their performance audits.
It said the top court was receiving several complaints against high court judges and it was high time to assess the expenditure on them vis-a-vis their output.
The top court’s remark came on a plea of four people who moved the top court claiming that the Jharkhand High Court reserved its order on the criminal appeal against conviction and life sentence in 2022 but the judgment was not pronounced.
Advocate Fauzia Shakil, appearing for them, said after the top court’s nudge in the matter, the high court on May 5 and 6 pronounced the verdicts in their cases in which three of the four were acquitted while the remaining resulted in a split verdict. The matter was referred to the high court chief justice and he was granted bail, she said.
The top court said the issue raised in the case was of “paramount importance” and “goes to the root of the criminal justice system”.
It tagged the plea with a similar case related to the Allahabad High Court where information was sought on the date of pronouncement of the judgment and the date when the judgment was uploaded on the apex court website.
“It seems to us that the issues noticed in above mentioned orders would require a deeper analysis and mandatory guidelines by this court, so that convicts or undertrials aren’t compelled to lose the trust and faith in the justice delivery system,” the apex court had said.
The timeline prescribed earlier by this court for the pronouncement of judgments, it said, will have to be adhered to along with a mechanism that this court will propose.
The bench directed the registry to collate data from high courts and posted the matter in July. (Agencies)
